Artificial intelligence is going to usher in a new era of American prosperity. Also, it’s going to automate our lives so we have more time to enjoy ourselves. We have to beat China to develop it, though, or else we’ll get left on the wrong side of the inequality rift. In fact, you should probably learn how it works before it takes your job away. Everybody’s going to be able to use it to do everything, after all.
And then, eventually, AI will kill you. It’s going to kill us all, probably, and in exceptionally dramatic fashion: hijacked nuclear codes, drone assaults, robot wars, things of this nature. Which is why we need to be the first to build it. And by the way, please invest half a trillion dollars in my company’s data center buildout.
Hoo, boy. Such has been Silicon Valley’s marketing messaging about the development of generative AI tools since about 2023 or so. Regardless of the spin, the reality of our experience with AI has been far more mundane, even annoying and occasionally cringeworthy. AI-powered tools and their output have crept steadily into some of the most intimate parts of our lives, from the software we use to email our family to, extraordinarily, the counsel of our faith leaders. Somehow, the brightest minds in San Francisco are working feverishly to build the technology that—as disgusted local commentators have been pointing out after visiting this year’s Tulsa State Fair—makes popcorn shrimp look horrific.
I’m speaking of course about AI slop, the uncanny, low-quality output of chatbots trained by large language models. It comes in many forms: unnecessary emails sent by your overstretched manager, flyers for events you may have attended before you clocked the slop. But these models do draw from our literature, our media and our posts. AI slop is, in its way, a post-materialist simulacrum of our beliefs and desires, a radically dumb helping hand in our own efforts at communication. I see it as a reflection of humanity in a funhouse mirror.
Normally, my attention skates right off of AI-generated images, but I can’t escape the nagging question of what this slop is telling us about ourselves. When I saw the chatter fire up about all the AI on display at this year’s Tulsa State Fair, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to turn my gaze directly into the abyss. In it, I saw my wildest, deep-fried fears and hopes come not exactly to life, but to something more sad and mundane: a mimicry of my own desire.
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First off, AI slop does indeed make food look gross. My visit to the Tulsa State Fair yielded slop in many forms, but primarily it showed up as menus and displays for food items ranging from gumbo to dirty sodas. Slop treats cluster together and somehow bulge. Square-shaped items are rendered as too precise. And the color saturation is always either too much or too little, resulting either in gustatory chaos or an unnerving monotone.